Does God Play "Hide and Seek"?

[thomas t]

In Interfaith Discussion, someone said so.
Since I want to debate, let me open up a thread in the debate section now.

In my opinion it is not childish to play hide and seek.
For - the Christian - God it makes sense, in my view.

Last time he landed on the cross.
Why should he bother to come into an environment in which people want to kill him (again)?
Even if he is powerful enough to prevent others from killing him - the mere experience of people trying to kill him must be an unpleasant one, I guess.

This is arguing for the Christian God conception. At least seen from my point of view.

Anyone please feel free to add their views on how this issue is handled in other religions...

 

[Audie]

The hide and seek game is there, but on
a different level.

An imaginary God is a game. Of course nobody
can find it.

As for this "cross" business, that was
(according to the rules of the game)
planned all along, and a weird sort
of gift to mankind.

Now, if he is chicken to come back
that sounds dubious, but, will have to
do as yet another ad hoc "explanation"
for why nobody can detect the nonexistent.

 

[ratiocinator]

Last time he landed on the cross.
Why should he bother to come into an environment in which people want to kill him (again)?
Even if he is powerful enough to prevent others from killing him - the mere experience of people trying to kill him must be an unpleasant one, I guess.

Firstly, in your mythology, the cross was kind of the plan, wasn't it?

Secondly, if this god of yours didn't incarnate itself as just another human preacher but actually revealed itself directly, then the whole argument falls down.

Thirdly, a game of hide-and-seek is, if it's important for humans to believe, not only childish but cruel and manifestly unjust.

 

[Audie]

Firstly, in your mythology, the cross was kind of the plan, wasn't it?

Secondly, if this god of yours didn't incarnate itself as just another human preacher but actually revealed itself directly, then the whole argument falls down.

Thirdly, a game of hide-and-seek is, if it's important for humans to believe, not only childish but cruel and manifestly unjust.

We await a list of modern day preschers
and claimants to divinity who were put to death
for their activities.

Eight? One? David Karesh, does he qualify?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Firstly, in your mythology, the cross was kind of the plan, wasn't it?

Secondly, if this god of yours didn't incarnate itself as just another human preacher but actually revealed itself directly, then the whole argument falls down.

Thirdly, a game of hide-and-seek is, if it's important for humans to believe, not only childish but cruel and manifestly unjust.

And the countless different religions out there, many of them having different versions of eternal punishment if one does not believe as they tell their followers that they are supposed to believe, then God is playing hide and seek if he exists.

 

[Subduction Zone]

We await a list of modern day preschers
and claimants to divinity who were put to death
for their activities.

Eight? One? David Karesh, does he qualify?

The church of Jim Jones? Was it cruel to apply the standards of the rest of us puny humans to him? No wonder that he killed himself and most of his followers.

 

[thomas t]

Thank you for making me think.

Firstly, in your mythology, the cross was kind of the plan, wasn't it?

it's like Russia having planned to burn down their own capital when Napoleon approached.
It was part of the Russian plan, wasn't it?

Secondly, if this god of yours didn't incarnate itself as just another human preacher but actually revealed itself directly, then the whole argument falls down.

I don't think so.
You can't blame an innocent human being for murder just for having shown up the wrong way.
If I show up the wrong way in a bar, I don't want to be shot for it. I have a right to life.
So does God.

Thirdly, a game of hide-and-seek is, if it's important for humans to believe, not only childish but cruel and manifestly unjust.

I don't think so.
BTW there are countless humans who believe without ever having encountered him or his voice or... or... . They just read the Bible and believe, isn't this great?

 

[ratiocinator]

it's like Russia having planned to burn down their own capital when Napoleon approached.
It was part of the Russian plan, wasn't it?

How would the whole "Jesus died for our sins" mantra have worked out if nobody had killed him?

I don't think so.
You can't blame an innocent human being for murder just for having shown up the wrong way.
If I show up the wrong way in a bar, I don't want to be shot for it. I have a right to life.
So does God.

It's impossible for your god (in your myth) to suffer anything it doesn't want to. This is nothing short of absurd. You do seem to have a particular talent for coming up with absurd arguments about your god. Anyway, if your god is the omnipotent and omniscient creator of everything, it is also therefore omni-responsible.

BTW there are countless humans who believe without ever having encountered him or his voice or... or... . They just read the Bible and believe, isn't this great?

Countless? How many do you know of directly? Regardless, there are also people (such as myself) who read the bible fully expecting it to be the amazing revelation of what they've been told, only to find an incoherent, disjointed, and often self-contradictory mess. Reading the bible was the beginning of the end of my (thankfully brief) period of believing.

 

[Windwalker]

In my opinion it is not childish to play hide and seek.
For - the Christian - God it makes sense, in my view.

Last time he landed on the cross.
Why should he bother to come into an environment in which people want to kill him (again)?
Even if he is powerful enough to prevent others from killing him - the mere experience of people trying to kill him must be an unpleasant one, I guess.

Yet, Jesus taught us, 'Let your light so shine before men that they may see God'. And again, "No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light."

These would seem to contradict the idea that God is in hiding. Perhaps God does not hide, but shines in plain sight for all to see? Does this sound like hiding to you?

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard."

Ps. 19​

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In Interfaith Discussion, someone said so.
Since I want to debate, let me open up a thread in the debate section now.

In my opinion it is not childish to play hide and seek.
For - the Christian - God it makes sense, in my view.

Last time he landed on the cross.
Why should he bother to come into an environment in which people want to kill him (again)?
Even if he is powerful enough to prevent others from killing him - the mere experience of people trying to kill him must be an unpleasant one, I guess.

This is arguing for the Christian God conception. At least seen from my point of view.

Anyone please feel free to add their views on how this issue is handled in other religions...

As long as all evidence is consistent with the Christian God not existing at all, that's going to be the simplest and best explanation for the facts at hand.

The question of whether you're able to sort out the inconsistencies in some other explanation is pretty much irrelevant to me.

As long as your argument amounts to "here are all the reasons why God acts as if he doesn't exist," I'm not going to see any reason to set aside the obvious explanation: that God just doesn't exist.

 

[Audie]

How would the whole "Jesus died for our sins" mantra have worked out if nobody had killed him?



It's impossible for your god (in your myth) to suffer anything it doesn't want to. This is nothing short of absurd. You do seem to have a particular talent for coming up with absurd arguments about your god. Anyway, if your god is the omnipotent and omniscient creator of everything, it is also therefore omni-responsible.



Countless? How many do you know of directly? Regardless, there are also people (such as myself) who read the bible fully expecting it to be the amazing revelation of what they've been told, only to find an incoherent, disjointed, and often self-contradictory mess. Reading the bible was the beginning of the end of my (thankfully brief) period of believing.

Countless were told, believe or else.

I also read the Bible, believing ( ha )
what Christians said about how terrif it
is.
Ok, finally here is a little folk wisdom,
nothing special or unique, some of
it superstitious nonsense.

Wild stories of magic monsters and miracles.

Some ideas about morality, a mixed bag
on those.

I can hardly conceive of a person who
didn't alresdy want tobelieve in gods being convinced by that book.

 

[Audie]

Yet, Jesus taught us, 'Let your light so shine before men that they may see God'. And again, "No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light."

These would seem to contradict the idea that God is in hiding. Perhaps God does not hide, but shines in plain sight for all to see? Does this sound like hiding to you?

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard."

Ps. 19​

The heavens declare glory but the rat carrying bubonic plague?
Declareth it what?

 

[PureX]

These kinds of questions come from a magicized, too literal interpretation of the mythology. Jesus died because we (humanity) killed him. And we killed him because we didn't want to hear his message. We didn't like it. It made us look at ourselves in a way that wasn't very flattering to our egos and our phony sense of self-righteousness. And to those in power, his message was perceived as a threat to their power, so he had to go. And if a similar man with a similar message were among us today, most of us would be clamoring to shut him up and get rid of him just the same, and for all the same reasons. And many of those people would be "Christians", just as it was the Jews that condemned the Jewish Jesus.

The point of this story is not about magical god-men opening the gates of heaven for us, or about religious inclusion/exclusion. It's a story about human nature, and how we react to the truth of ourselves, and how this reaction to the truth condemns us to a kind of hell on Earth. And it's also a story about how we COULD do so much better, and how our lives COULD be so much better if we would just choose to face our truth and react differently.

But we still don't want to acknowledge this simple message. And we're still trying to kill it by burying it in religiosity and magical thinking. Or by rejecting it for being buried in religiosity and magical thinking. So that we go on living in our own stupidity, and greed, and willful ignorance. Raging egos and pointing fingers; pointing everywhere but at ourselves. The story of Jesus' life and death is OUR story. Not his. And until we accept this, we will just keep on living it year after year after year. Condemning the messenger because we don't like the message. And thereby rejecting the way out of a hell of our own making.

 

[Windwalker]

The heabens declsre it but the rat carrying bubonic plague?
Declareth it what?

That declares the stupidity of humans to co-habitat with rats, and not have the foresight to deal with raw waste before clustering together in cities, essentially inviting rats to live with them everywhere. Thus saith the science.

 

[Audie]

That declares the stupidity of humans to co-habitat with rats, and not have the foresight to deal with raw waste before clustering together in cities, essentially inviting rats to live with them everywhere. Thus saith the science.

Excessively cute sidestep.

 

[Windwalker]

Excessively cute sidestep.

No sidestep at all. You are complaining about a human-created situation, and saying it was God's design. Methinks the sidestepping is yours.

 

[Left Coast]

In my opinion it is not childish to play hide and seek.
For - the Christian - God it makes sense, in my view.

Last time he landed on the cross.
Why should he bother to come into an environment in which people want to kill him (again)?

Per the New Testament, Jesus came to Earth intending to be killed. It was God's idea. Don't blame it on anyone else, please.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Countless? How many do you know of directly? Regardless, there are also people (such as myself) who read the bible fully expecting it to be the amazing revelation of what they've been told, only to find an incoherent, disjointed, and often self-contradictory mess. Reading the bible was the beginning of the end of my (thankfully brief) period of believing.

What? You read the Bible and still don't believe? Then read it again and try to believe harder. Try doing it while wearing ruby slippers:

 

[Audie]

No sidestep at all. You are complaining about a human-created situation, and saying it was God's design. Methinks the sidestepping is yours.

People didn't invent the organisms,
nor all the ugliness and horror of life on earth.

I find it vaguely amusing that godists find God
In what of nature is pleasing, but the ugly
and awful doesn't count.

 

[Revoltingest]

God plays hide.
People play seek....some people.